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While watching their son Dixie Flyers sophomore linebacker Malakai Fakahua in Friday's Class 3AA championship game at Rice-Eccles Stadium, mom Kim said that it was dad Nale who was the talkative one.

Reflecting over the past few weeks of consistent travel from St. George, though, Nale Fakahua suddenly became the one-word-answer man.

"Rough," he said, trying to describe the rigors.

Is that physically or financially?

"Both," Fakahua said.

The Dixie-Hurricane finale marked the third straight week that both schools voyaged far out of the St. George area for 3AA football games.

Prior to their 27-19 victory on Friday, Dixie had upended Pine View in a state semifinal game also at Rice-Eccles. The week before that, the Flyers also traveled north to Stansbury for a quarterfinal game.

The Fakahua crew actually skipped that Stansbury game, and for pretty good reason: They had just come back from watching their daughter Alisi in Orem.

Alisi Fakahua is part of the Dixie volleyball squad that was at the Class 3A tournament at Utah Valley University.

"But it's been exciting and so fun to watch our kids progress and move along, just watching the kids work together to get to this point," Nale Fakahua said.

On the other side of the field, the 14-member Sefita clan had a similar story. Charlie Sefita started both ways for Hurricane on Friday, and his parents had also made their way up for the semifinal win in Salt Lake City over Desert Hills and a quarterfinal victory the week before at Juan Diego High in Draper.

Something had to give with the Sefitas, too, because daughter Melisha is on the Tigers' volleyball team.

Unlike last year, the parents stayed home instead of making the trip to Orem for volleyball.

"Not this year. Everything is geared toward coming up here — taking days off, kids going to school. It's just an exciting time for the parents," said Taei Aloi, Charlie Sefita's stepfather, who regularly packed his Ford Explorer with seven to nine people for the I-15 drives.

"Some of the kids have to stay home sometimes, because we don't have room," Aloi said. "We don't mind coming up once in awhile, but not every week."

All four teams in this year's 3AA semis were from the south region. Last year, Juan Diego was the only North squad to dent the Final Four for the recently created classification.

Rob Cuff, executive director for the Utah High School Activities Association, said that the championship game will likely continue to be held at Rice-Eccles, although the semifinals are another matter.

"The protocol, up to this point, is to let the schools request a change. This year, we didn't get a request to move the semifinals," Cuff said. "Generally, the finals have always been here because it's the climax of the season and the kids have looked forward to it."

And it's not like there's no variation to the weekly travel rhythm.

After all, many Dixie parents in the semifinal round took advantage of a chance not to drive in their own cars.

"Last week, the booster club charted a bus and we came up on that," said Eddie Stevenson, father of Flyers junior linebacker Namu Stevenson. "That was nice."